


Awake My Soul

by ashintuku



Series: your faith in shreds it seems [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Excessive amounts of symbolism, Gen, Minor Canonical Violence, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 01:59:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashintuku/pseuds/ashintuku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the middle of August when the Change happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awake My Soul

_And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death._

                                                                                                            Revelation, 6.8

 

 

Death never comes expectedly.

 

That was an accepted fact of the world: Death never comes expectedly. He came whenever he wished to, travelling down pathways and watching the world with eyes so old that they saw too little and knew too much.

 

He came in whatever form he wished to, from the creaking limbs of old men to the fluttering of little-girl feet. He was never the same, for Death always looked different to every person who dies. Some saw what would comfort them the most when they passed on: they saw their lovers, their mothers, their brothers or sons; some saw what would torment them the most as they were dragged into levels of fire and ice: they saw the Nazis, the reaper, the dead babies and screaming girls. To the atheists he came as a man in a suit; to the religious, he appeared as an angel or a demon.

 

Death was everyone and everything, and Death came when he wished to.

 

~+~

 

It was the middle of August when the Change happened.

 

Scott had gone to see his father for a couple of weeks, because the bastard had asked to see him and Scott needed a break from the madness that was Beacon Hills. Allison and her father had gone off somewhere in the landlocked states to find family or friends of family who could help them deal with the shit Gerard brought upon their heads in his mad search for a cure.

 

Erica and Boyd were missing, and that was always a bit nerve-wracking, wasn’t it? But it was to be expected, because this was Beacon Hills, and Beacon Hills was apparently a hellmouth if ever there was one in the world. Peter Hale was quiet, and that was unnerving because the man did so like to hear himself talk, and Isaac was staying with Derek in the dilapidated Hale House these days, probably helping him rebuild it if the occasional text he got from the Prettiest Pup was anything to go by.

 

Lydia and Jackson were keeping to themselves and each other over the summer, barely leaving their respective houses except to pretend to have social lives, and Derek was himself: brooding and angst-ridden and angry at the world, all while being Stupidly Attractive and Ridiculously Chivalrous.

 

And then there was Stiles.

 

Since Scott was out of state, Allison was ignoring him because he was Scott’s plus one, and Lydia and Jackson were the greatest hide-and-seekers on the planet, Stiles had nothing to do. He played video games; he cooked dinner for his dad, and made him lunch and brought it over to him every day. He researched, watched porn, whacked a few out every other day, and read classic literature. He cleaned the house top to bottom and then he did it again, or he made his mom’s cookies and messed up on the recipe because Kalipsé Stilinski used to sprinkle in a bit of hazelnut into her chocolate chip recipe and Stiles could never figure out the right amount.

 

(Sometimes when he was making the cookies, trying to remember how she used to move and sing and smile while she did it, Stiles would remember that last night in the hospital when she finally closed her eyes and went away. She had looked right at him, her hand pressed against his pale, chubby cheek – still retaining baby fat but disappearing by the day – and she had smiled so prettily that her son thought everything would be okay. She smiled, and she cried, and she whispered, ‘thank you, baby’, and then her hand fell onto the bed and she flat lined.)

 

But it was the middle of August – August 12 to be exact, so more near the beginning, but middle-ish all the same – when everything Changed, though Stiles didn’t know it right away.

 

It was Grocery Day, and Stiles knew that if he didn’t do the grocery shopping that day that the Stilinski men would either starve or have to eat take-out until Stiles eventually got off of his lazy ass and bought some groceries. That, or John would become too content with his diet of grease and cholesterol and really, Stiles couldn’t have _that_.

 

So he grabbed his wallet, plucked his keys from the countertop, slipped into Old Faithful (for she was a good girl for all that she groaned and broke down at inopportune moments) and headed for the local grocery mart.

 

It was when he was fiddling with the radio dials that the Change began.

 

Frowning down at the radio when the station switched to white noise, Stiles didn’t even see the Plymouth Neon until the sound of metal against metal screamed into his ears and his airbag punched him in the face.

 

He coughed, flailing his arms and choking against his seatbelt while he attempted to push the bag out of his face, forcing it to deflate as best as he could. He could see the smaller car, windows cracked and driver slumped over, and Stiles looked around to make sure he hadn’t missed any stop signs or street lights while fiddling with his radio – but no, he was in the all clear. The guy must have just come barrelling down his side of the road and hadn’t looked to see if there was oncoming traffic.

 

Arching his back in an attempt to stretch or breathe, he couldn’t tell, he fumbled with the seatbelt and finally managed to undo it, his hands shaking so much that it became ten times more difficult than it should have been. He pushed open the door, watching as it swung open way too easy to be healthy for his bank account, before he stumbled over to the other car, peering inside and seeing the driver stir behind the wheel.

 

“H-hey!” he called out, having no idea why he was shouting but feeling like it was appropriate enough. “I’m gonna – I’m gonna get you out, okay? And then I’ll call for help! Okay? Do you hear me?”

 

The driver lifted his head wearily, blood dripping down a nasty cut along his hairline, before he nodded slowly; so slowly that it made Stiles wonder if his head was swimming as much as his had that one time Derek slammed it against his steering wheel. Foreheads and steering wheels were not supposed to be friends; the teenager knew that _very_ well.

 

He stumbled over to the driver’s side, seeing that the jeep had shifted back a bit after the hit. She was scratched up and dented, but she had been through worse since Scott got a case of werewolf rabies, so he wasn’t _too_ worried. Sliding between Old Faithful and the Plymouth, he yanked and jimmied with the handle until it finally cracked open, Stiles letting out a breath of relief when it did so. That meant he didn’t hit it too hard; the guy would be fine, probably just concussed.

 

“Hey there, buddy,” Stiles greeted with a grin, ignoring the fact that this man looked to be closer to Derek’s age than his own age. And while Derek wasn’t that much older than Stiles, he was still an adult, and that was just disorientating to remember at times like this when the world was already spinning enough. “Damage doesn’t look too bad. You’re probably just shaken up, huh? Gotta look both ways when you’re crossing the street, you know, ‘specially since I had right of way. But we’ll get into all that legal stuff later. Let’s get you out of this hunk of junk.”

 

Stiles reached in and grabbed onto the man’s arm, and tugged.

 

The man made a choking noise, jerking back from Stiles and looking at him with wide eyes full of awe and horror, as if he were looking at something sublime and not an ordinary teenage boy with buzzed hair and too many moles to be socially acceptable. He shook once, choked again, and spat out blood, before convulsing and suddenly slumping forward onto Stiles like a puppet with its strings cut off.

 

Stiles yelled out in alarm, arms coming up to catch the man immediately even if he didn’t particularly want to touch him. Dragging him out of the car, he carried him over to the side of the road, setting him down on his back and looking down at him, completely unsure as to what to do. He had been around a lot of dead people, lately – had even set a guy on fire, but he came back so it didn’t really count – but he didn’t know what to do with one after it was. Well, dead. The wolves usually took care of that, and Stiles usually took care of thinking up a cover story, because that was apparently the role of humans associated with werewolves.

 

Who knew.

 

Staring down at the man, from the little stain of blood on the corner of his mouth to the sluggishly dripping blood from his head wound, sure to stop bleeding any second now because it was only shallow and it shouldn’t have done so much damage, Stiles felt himself go numb and he thought about his mother smiling at him and telling him ‘thank you’.

 

He then pulled out his phone and dialled 911.

 

~+~

 

When the sheriff’s police cruiser pulled up beside Old Faithful, Stiles held back a groan and buried his face in his hands while the EMTs tried to check his vitals.

 

“Stiles?” He could hear the confusion, that moment of pause when things were suspended in disbelief, and Stiles waited for the penny to fall. “Stiles! Oh my God, are you okay?!”

 

“I’m fine, Dad,” Stiles spoke up, dropping his hands when the EMT lady gave an insistent tug, wincing when a flashlight was held in front of his eyes. He stared at her while she looked for signs of concussion or other trauma, before she gave him a grim smile and patted his shoulder, walking away. John rushed over to him, gripping him by the shoulders and looking him over three times as if he didn’t trust the professional’s opinion, before dragging his boy into a hug so tight Stiles thought he’d suffocate.

 

“Dad! Can’t breathe!”

 

“What the hell _happened_?” John demanded, pulling back to take another look at his son, patting him down as if he were looking for injuries or for concealed weapons. “Stiles?”

 

“I was heading to the grocery store, and I wasn’t looking at the road – it was pretty empty, and I don’t have any stop signs or street lights to worry about, so I didn’t think it’d be terrible to take my eyes off for a second – anyhow, and this guy comes careening out of nowhere, I think he ignored his stop sign, and we collided. He was alive when I got out of the jeep…there wasn’t too much damage, I could open his door and all that. He just had a cut on his head. But when I tried to pull him out he had this, like, fit, and then he just…died. Right in my arms.” He paused, silenced by John suddenly hugging him again, and he realized for the first time that he should probably be more upset than he was.

 

“Jesus, Stiles, that must have been scary as hell.”

 

“…Y-yeah,” Stiles mumbled, burying his face into his father’s shoulder and lifting his hands to grab onto his coat. His fingers felt numb, and his stomach felt scooped out like he’d just been sick, but he couldn’t feel a panic attack coming.

 

And that should have been the first sign that something was wrong.

 

~+~

 

Old Faithful was put into the shop after the police were done processing her, so Stiles was left without a ride and thus left with nothing to do.

 

He was playing video games later into August, almost a week and a half since the accident, when there came a knock on the door.

 

Pausing his game and righting himself from his upside-down position, Stiles shook his head to try and right the world before shuffling to the door, scratching at his stomach and wondering who it was at the door and if they for some reason had a pizza with them.

 

He was not expecting Lydia Martin when he opened the door.

 

“Uh,” Stiles gaped stupidly; eyes wide and mouth attractively open for any nearby flies to fly into. Lydia stared at him for a moment, waiting for Stiles to invite her inside or something, before she decided that the vampire way of life was tiresome and she simply pushed passed her classmate, walking into the house as if this were a regular thing. Which it was not. Stiles would have known if Lydia Martin spent any time in his house at all outside of times when horrific events were happening around them. “Hi?”

 

“Hello, Stiles,” she greeted, voice as angelically clipped as usual. She glanced around the living room, raising an eyebrow at the paused screen showing some alien’s head being blasted off in a gory explosion, before turning back to the only other person in Beacon Hills high school who could possibly match her for intelligence. “I heard you were in an accident?”

 

“Oh, yeah, like a little over a week ago,” Stiles shrugged, moving around her into the kitchen, deciding that his shock at the prettiest girl in the town standing in his living room could wait until he had some food in his stomach. “I’m fine, if that’s why you came over.”

 

“Yes, I can see that,” Lydia murmured, narrowing her eyes and cocking her head to the side. She examined him like he’d seen her examine math equations, clinically and so thoroughly he felt like a lab rat. “I didn’t think you’d actually be _hurt_ – I mean, that crappy jeep of yours has to be good for something. But you’ve been quieter lately. I haven’t gotten even one text from you, and I know you send me one once a day either to apologize, tell me I’m beautiful, or wish me a good night. Sweet, but a tad annoying.”

  
“Oh? Hah, I guess you’re glad I’ve stopped then, huh?”

 

“No,” Lydia said contrarily, walking towards the kitchen, her heels _click-clicking_ crisply. Kalipsé never used to wear heels, since she said they hurt her ankles, and so the sound of heels click-clacking on their hardwood floor was almost alien. The entire situation was alien, but he wasn’t about to say so. “It’s a bit troubling, really. I mean, you’re not the type to just give up on something, even when you know it’s impossible to get – yet you’ve totally stopped trying to get on my good side.” She looked at him again, eyes bright and clear and piercing.

 

Stiles smiled vaguely, shrugging his shoulders and looking away from her after a moment, rifling through his fridge. “I’m not emotionally traumatized, if that’s what you’re wondering. I’ve just been keeping to myself for a few days, that’s all. Scott comes home in a few days, and Allison and her dad a few days after that – though technically I shouldn’t know that – so I have to prepare for the nightly phone calls from my best friend saying how much he misses Allison and how much he hopes things get cleared up this year so that they can finally go out in peace. Grabbin’ a bit of me-time, ya know?”

 

Lydia narrowed her eyes on him contemplatively, humming softly after a moment and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “…Well, alright then. But you better get back to normal soon; you’re the only truly constant thing in my life right now.” She paused, frowning thoughtfully and slowly folding in on herself into a hug, before shaking herself loose again. “Could I have a glass of water?”

 

“Sure – I’m making some grilled cheese, too, if you’d like?”

 

“Oh, no thanks,” Lydia shook her head, flashing a quick smile when Stiles handed her a glass of water, “I’m on a diet.”

 

“But you’re perfect!” Stiles protested. Lydia smiled shoulders finally relaxing as Stiles seemed to go back to his usual over-active self.

 

“Yes, well, even perfection can have improvements.”

 

“Nonsense,” Stiles countered, looking at her with eyes so old for a moment she wondered why she had never noticed before. But then they were gone, replaced by the youthful vitality that was a young boy with too little sleep and too much time, and he grinned at her cheerfully. “Finish your summer reading?”

 

Lydia laughed, not even surprised that he knew about that, because Stiles knew everything about her and there was something comforting in that fact. “I’m finishing up with Morrison’s _Beloved_ ; should be done today.”

 

“Oh?” Stiles turned his back on the girl he loved, so that she wouldn’t see that he wasn’t smiling anymore. “I haven’t read that one – what’s it about?”

 

“Well, there’s this woman called Sethe…”

 

~+~

 

Three days later, Scott came back to Beacon Hills with a matured frown on his brow and troubled eyes.

 

Stiles went over to his place the first day he got back, hitching a ride with his dad and promising him that he’d find some way safely back to his place when curfew came up; because when one was the only son of the sheriff, they had a curfew placed on them even when it was summertime. He brought video games and a bag of all-dressed chips and a litre of coke for their reunion, and Scott accepted it all and his best friend with a grin and a one-armed hug.

 

In the middle of firing a laser sniper at Scott’s character, successfully taking him down with a headshot, the human teenager paused the game and turned to Scott with a careful expression. Scott knew the expression; Stiles was about to ask about something unpleasant.

 

“How was your dad?”

 

“Same as always,” Scott shrugged, scrubbing at his face and frowning. “He worked most of the time, so I didn’t really get to see him. He’s got a new girlfriend, too – some redheaded chick from somewhere up north, maybe Canada? She was nice, at least.” Scott dropped his controller, tugging at his hair which was growing out again and frowning down at his lap. “…I really hate going there, Stiles.”

 

Stiles dropped his controller, too, sliding over to Scott and wrapping an arm around his best friend’s shoulders, giving him a squeeze when Scott nearly slumped against him and buried his face in his shirt. He didn’t even say half the things that came to mind, like how lucky Scott was to still _have_ both of his parents, because he might not have known from personal experience, but sometimes parents sucked – and having sucky parents was just like having dead parents.

 

It always hurt.

 

~+~

 

School started up again during the last week of August, and Stiles wondered what unpleasant madness was going to come from his junior year.

 

Climbing into Old Faithful, as she was finally fixed and road-ready, the teenager pulled out his driveway just a little earlier than his father, giving a quick wave to John from where he stood in the doorway before making his way towards the high school. The roads were relatively clear, but Stiles didn’t take his eyes off of them for a minute, not wanting another summer accident on his baby – he didn’t think she could handle it.

 

He parked into a good spot as soon as he got to school, hopping out of his car just in time for a familiar Porsche to slide into the spot next to him in the douchiest parking job Stiles had ever seen, before Jackson Whittemore slid out of the driver’s seat, grabbing his backpack from the shotgun as he went.

 

He looked a little less like an asshole these days, but that could be because he had less of a holier-than-thou expression on his (too pretty to be fucking real) face. He’d also apparently buzzed his hair over the summer, the brown-almost-blond hair just starting to grow back to its previous pretty-boy glory. Decked out as if he were some Ivy League sports star, with aviators covering his eyes, the kanima-turned-werewolf locked up his expensive car and made his way towards the school’s front doors, pushing Stiles aside with a shoulder as he went.

 

“Holy shit Jackson, are you sick?”

 

The lacrosse co-captain stopped mid-step, turning back towards Stiles and lowering his shades so that light blue eyes (which Stiles could only imagine glowing ethereal and unreal these days) could stare at him in impatience more effectively. A single eyebrow lifted to add to the overall effect, and Stiles could admit that Jackson’s face was a face made to express emotions if not like a bastard, then at least theatrically.

 

“Stilinski – I know it may not have occurred to you, and that’s really pathetic since you’ve known about this stuff longer than I have, but just to bring you up to date: I. Cannot. Get. Sick. Not anymore. Perks of being a werewolf.” He paused, taking his sunglasses off completely and folding them in his hands, eyes narrowing questioningly at Stiles after a moment. “Why are you even asking?”

 

“You just about seared the flesh from my arm off, you’re so hot. And no, that wasn’t a comment on your looks, Pretty Boy Floyd, I mean physically. You’re burning up.”

 

Jackson snorted, pocketing his aviators and adjusting his book bag strap as if preparing to dismiss Stiles as trivial and get on with the oh-so-important matter of high school society. “Well, _duh_. So is Scott and Isaac and Derek – what’s so special about that?” He frowned. “I’m just a warm-blooded animal.”

 

_Now_ , Stiles thought idly, scratching at his jaw and shaking his head slowly. “Jackson, they’re not as warm as you. I’ve been around them all – been pushed around by them. Physical abuse for all!” He shook his head. “You’re just…you’re scary hot.”

 

Jackson shifted, momentarily knocked off his pedestal of I-know-better-than-you-I’m-the-lacrosse-team’s-captain, before rolling his eyes and turning away from Stiles abruptly, throwing a wave over his shoulder. A consideration he wouldn’t have taken before the summer, so that was a pleasant surprise.

 

“You’re imagining things, Stilinski. See you at lacrosse practice. I’ll need you there so that I can perfect my tackle.”

 

“I am not your practice dummy!” Stiles shouted, but Jackson ignored him. The human rubbed his arm carefully, remembering the heat that had come off of Jackson like a fever, before shaking his head. Perhaps he was just warmer than the others because he’d been a cold-blooded predator for so long, or something.

 

Or something.

 

~+~

 

Stiles thought that this whole ‘worrying for Jackson’ thing was tiring, and so he decided to do something about it.

 

Walking into his AP English class (how he managed to get into it when he had the habit of going off on completely unrelated tangents, he would never know), the teenager slid into the seat next to Lydia Martin. The kid who usually sat there, some new guy named Ethan who gave him the chills to be perfectly honest, gave him a cold look for about a minute before moving on to the free seat behind him. Used to such expressions from the likes of the goddess beside him and the terrifying but kind of okay Derek Hale, Stiles managed to ignore him with minimal internal freak-out. That was what he called a useful life skill.

 

“What is it, Stiles?” Lydia asked once Stiles had settled into his seat, binder in front of him and flipped open to a blank page so that he could write diligent notes and doodle in the margins during class. She glanced over at him; her desk set up in such pristine order it was kind of amazing that people thought she was just a pretty face and nothing else. No one could be that organized and still be seen as ditzy, it was against some natural law of the universe.

 

“Well, I was wondering something,” Stiles started, taking out both pen and highlighter, because he liked to follow the teacher’s lecture with the text book and highlight whatever it was the teacher repeated a few times; if it was repeated, that meant it was important, and the teacher was trying to get you to remember the factoid. At least, that’s what his dad told him. “Just a little something, nothing major.”

 

“What is it?”

 

“Have you noticed anything odd about Jackson lately? Outside of the obvious. Seriously, why did he cut his hair, it was his one beauty.”

 

“What are you implying, Amy?” Lydia asked, pinning him down with a stare that could immobilize a snake if she wanted to. He grinned, though, causing her to tick a brow up in inquiry.

 

“You got the reference!”

 

“Of course I did, now spit out whatever you want to tell me or stop talking to me. I’m already damaging my brittle reputation by paying attention to you.”

 

“You wound me, Lydia, you really do. Does Jackson seem overly warm to you?”

 

Lydia snapped her mouth shut, having been about to say the first thing that came to her mind, contemplating Stiles seriously for a moment. Twisting a perfectly placed curl around her fingers, she narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips together (in what Scott called her ‘duck face’ and Stiles corrected as her ‘being a genius’ face).

 

“…now that you mention it, yes. But I thought that was a totally normal thing to happen, all things considered.”

 

“Not quite to that degree,” Stiles said, frowning and twisting the cap on his highlighter, tugging it off and jamming it back on again as he thought. “I asked if he was sick.”

 

“I thought that wasn’t an option anymore.”

  
“So did I,” he grinded his teeth together, dropping his highlighter and rubbing at his forehead, “but the more I think about it, the more it seems like that’s the most likely answer. I mean – maybe he’s got some sort of…supernatural wolf-only disease? Is that a thing?”

 

“How should I know? You all seemed very content to leave me out of the loop all of last year. I had to guess at everything, and I _hate_ not knowing whether I’m right or not. You should know that – you know me so well.” Stiles made a face, and she smiled coolly, lifting both brows and staring at him with a look bordering on the condescending. “Maybe you should ask Derek.”

 

There was a brief twitch when she said his name, as if her mind was on a different Hale, before she shook her head and turned to the front of the class. Stiles took it as the dismissal it was, chewing on the end of his pen and wondering if Derek would even know – maybe turned wolves could get sick and born ones couldn’t, or something.

 

It was halfway through the lecture that the teen realized his plan to stop worrying about Jackson had failed.

 

~+~

 

This time, when the Change started again, Stiles reacted accordingly.

 

It was lacrosse practice, and Coach Finstock had decided that Stiles was going to be the defenseman to Danny’s goalie while the rest of the team practiced getting past him and throwing the ball into the goal. He thought this was somewhat unfair, as while he had _rocked_ at the season finals last year, Stiles was still 147lbs of pale flesh and fragile bone, his intellect and witty repartee his only feasible defense.

 

Finstock did not seem to care even a little.

 

Holding onto his lacrosse stick, helmet in place and pads protecting him as much as lacrosse pads could, Stiles hunkered down and prepared himself to an hour of getting mowed down by boys much bigger and stronger than him and watching Danny rock the world with his goalie skills.

 

It was going pretty well until he actually managed to knock someone back.

 

Stumbling forward with momentum, Stiles looked down at the guy laid out on the ground, groaning and holding onto his stick as if that would help him get air back into his lungs or something. Finstock moved from the sidelines, pushing aside curious boys and their need to see Bad Stuff, kneeling next to the student and prodding at his shoulder.

 

“Jefferson, you okay?”

 

“My chest hurts.”

 

“Your chest –? Stilinski didn’t even hit you that _hard_ , Jefferson, good God. Stilinski, help him get up and get him to the benches. I’ll go get the nurse to see if she can find out what’s wrong. I don’t want to call an ambulance for something minor.”

 

Nodding, Stiles moved to Jefferson’s side, grabbing onto his arm and pulling him up to his feet. He stumbled when Jefferson stiffed in his arms and then dropped against him, causing the two of them to crash to the ground like a bag of bricks and lacrosse gear.

 

At first he thought Jefferson had merely collapsed because he suddenly realized that his legs were hurt, too, or whatever, but then he noticed the sudden lack of a chest pressing against his side in pain-filled gasps. Pressing a hand against Jefferson’s pulse, because that is what he automatically thought to do, Stiles felt his stomach drop when he felt absolutely nothing.

 

“Stilinski, what the hell?”

 

“He hasn’t got a pulse,” Stiles whispered, hand still pressed against Jefferson’s neck, as if hoping that the longer he held his hand there the more likely it was his missing pulse would come out of hiding and tell him that it was all a silly joke.

 

“What?” Finstock headed back towards the two of them, his eyes widening as he saw something that Stiles couldn’t see because it was most likely his face.

 

“He hasn’t got a pulse,” he repeated, voice louder and cracking over ‘pulse’. “He hasn’t – he doesn’t – he – he hasn’t got a _pulse_.” And now Stiles could feel himself shaking, his hand wrapping around Jefferson’s throat as if the boy in his arms would be his anchor. He felt like one. Oh, God, he felt like one because he was so heavy and he was still so warm weren’t dead bodies supposed to be cold oh God oh _God_ –

 

He heard someone yell out to call an ambulance, and suddenly there were hands prying him away from the boy who dropped dead in his arms, the second dead body in so many weeks, dragging him away forcing him to sit his ass on the ground as if that would help him breathe. He thought he saw someone’s face in front of him, Scott’s or Isaac’s probably, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. All he could do was clutch at his own arms, dig his fingernails into pale flesh, and stare at his knees as if hoping there was a guide on how to deal with the first panic attack he’s had in _months_ written on the bumps and bones.

 

At one point he looked up, up over Scott-or-Isaac’s head, up towards a pair of eyes that he only saw glow ethereally these days staring back at him with confusion and a sick kind of understanding that he didn’t seem to comprehend completely himself.

 

He blacked out with a gasp as he was dragged into breathless unconsciousness.

 

~+~

 

He woke up in the hospital, and that damn-near pushed him into another panic attack in so many hours.

 

Looking around his room, he noted that it was a private room and that the door was closed. A water jug sat on the bedside table to his left, with an empty glass waiting to be filled with room-temperature water. There was something clamped onto his finger, the wire leading towards a machine that beeped and showed him numbers that he couldn’t comprehend. There was a single arrangement of flowers sitting on the windowsill, and a Get Well card probably bought in the hospital gift shop, a cheerful smiley face sitting on a background of neutral blue.

 

He was alone.

 

Settling against his pillows, he looked out the window and saw that it was dark. How long had he been out? It had just been a panic attack, nothing serious – yet he could remember the sun still being up when he collapsed, and now that sun was almost fully set. It had to have been a few hours. Maybe the attack had been more severe than he realized.

 

Stiles looked at the wall across from him, remembering Jackson’s eyes, thinking on the scratches in Old Faithful’s paint job, and hearing Kalipsé’s last words as she went away.

 

_Thank you, baby._

Thank you for what?

 

What had a little boy done for a suffering woman who had lost all her hair? What relief had a morose son brought to his dying mother? Why had Kalipsé said ‘thank you’ right before she died?

 

He thought about that day, thought about it so hard, trying to figure out why it was so important. Why was he remembering his mother’s words? Those strange, strange words that he had lied about to his father, telling John Stilinski that his wife had said she loved them before she passed on peacefully, as John had been gone only for three minutes to grab a coffee down the hall from one of those crappy machines. Why was he thinking about them now, when two people had died in his arms in so many weeks?

 

He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, feeling a headache settle behind the bridge of his nose in between the honey-hued irises, and groaned, low and deep and frustrated. The squeak of the door closing shocked him out of his miserable reverie.

 

“Holy _shit_ – Derek?”

 

The Alpha stood next to the door, leaning against the wall and staring at him with contemplative hazel eyes, the blue that he saw sometimes swelling up to drown out brown and green as if proving the underdog could be dominant. He was without his leather jacket, for once – and so he appeared almost naked, kind of like Nine without his jacket. It was wrong, somehow; it created a vulnerability that Stiles didn’t think he liked seeing in the werewolf.

 

“What are you doing here? Visiting hours are probably over, you know. If Mrs McCall catches you, I am not bailing you out.”

 

“You never have,” Derek said flippantly, and ouch, that actually hurt a little bit it was so honest. Stiles shifted uncomfortably, waiting for Derek to continue. Derek seemed to be waiting for Stiles to snap.

 

“…Are you going to answer my question, or are you gonna creep there like a creeper?”

 

“Isaac told me what happened at practice today.” The Alpha stepped closer, inching towards the side of the bed, and Stiles could feel a tension so thick he could stab it with a steak knife and chew into it. He wondered if this was what a rubber band pulled to its limits felt like as Derek reached his side, leaning in closer and wrinkling his nose in the telltale signs of inhaling Stiles’ emotions or something. “He told me about how that kid dropped dead as soon as you touched his skin.”

 

“Did I touch his skin?” Stiles asked faintly, furrowing his brow as he tried to remember. He could only remember the heavy weight of a dead thing and the warmth of what-once-was-Jefferson’s skin. He thought back to the guy in the Plymouth Neon, recalling the feel of hair on his arm, since he was wearing short sleeves in celebration of enjoying the last truly warm days of summer. He remembered his mother’s hand on his cheek, before that delicate hand fell from him and hung off the edge of the bed like a ragdoll’s.

 

Stiles was pulled out of memories of bleeding foreheads and smiling faces when Derek wrapped his fingers – long fingers, covered in calluses that must have taken ages to develop because of werewolf healing, with pale skin stretched over them as if trying to make you believe he was delicate before he snapped your neck – around the wrist that was lying by his side limply.

 

“Whoa, what are you doing?”

 

“Testing something,” Derek muttered, narrowing his eyes as he stared down at his hand gripping onto Stiles’ wrist, callused fingers squeezing, before he frowned and let go, staring down at his hand. Stiles stared up at him uncomfortably, glad that he didn’t seem to need a heart-rate monitor for a simple panic attack. Not that that mattered to Derek, of course; Derek was a living, breathing stethoscope.

 

“…And what are your conclusions, Doctor Hale? Am I going to live?”

 

“I think the question is am _I_ ,” Derek said softly, before dropping his hand and levelling a look onto Stiles that made him feel small. It was a heavy, mature look, and he wasn’t used to seeing that on Derek’s face. “Peter’s looking up what could be going on with you.”

 

“A comforting thought, truly. I feel so much better knowing that a man who denies all laws of reality is looking up why people are dying around me with no seeming cause. Thank you, Derek; you have eased my worries forever.”

 

“Shut up,” Derek said simply, rolling his eyes and stepping back from the hospital bed. “We’re making sure nothing weird’s going on. We can’t afford to deal with it.”

 

“Oh, so Jackson gets to turn into a kanima around the same time Allison’s psychotic cancer-ridden grandfather comes into town swords blazing, but I’m not allowed to have something genuinely worrying happen to me? I sense favouritism, Derek, and I do not appreciate it.”

 

“To be fair, turning into a man-killing lizard with control issues is also genuinely worrying,” Derek stated, and Stiles had to take a minute to appreciate the fact that yes, Derek _did_ have a sense of wit about him, “but unlike a group of hunters coming into town, something a bit more dangerous is heading our way.”

 

“What the hell is more dangerous than a bunch of hunters wanting revenge for the death of a fellow psycho?”

 

“A pack of Alphas.”

 

“Can you smell that?” Stiles said, his voice rising up to pitches he had never wanted to reach, “that’s the stench of me _pissing myself_.” Derek rolled his eyes at the teenager’s over dramatics, crossing his arms and waiting for Stiles to breathe like a respectable human being and not an Olympic runner. “What the _hell_ , Derek, you couldn’t have told Scott about this _sooner_?”

 

“Well, seeing as Scott and I aren’t exactly talking to one another right now, when would I have had the time? Besides, Isaac probably already told him.”

 

“Oh, so they just forgot to tell good ol’ Stiles,” Stiles said snappishly, feeling neglected by his best friend all over again, and that was a terrible feeling because Scott was allowed to have as many friends as he wanted. But it still hurt. “That’s typical. How close are they?”

 

“They sent in a couple of scouts, you could say.”

 

“Scouts.”

 

“Get any new students in school?”

 

“…Those creepy _twins_? Dude! The smart one sat behind me in AP English today! Holy _shit_!”

 

“Stiles, calm down,” Derek ordered, reaching out and pushing against Stiles’ shoulder; he hadn’t even realized he had sat up in the middle of his freaking out and flailing. “We’re keeping an eye on you and Lydia, don’t worry.”

 

“Shit,” Stiles breathed, leaning back against his pillows and pressing his hand against his eyes. “ _Shit_. I cannot deal with this werewolf bullshit right now; I’m too busy with my own problems.”

 

“We’re going to figure that out,” Derek promised, before he stepped back some more, heading towards the door. “A nurse is coming in to check on you. I better leave.” Opening the door, he paused, looking back at Stiles with a contemplative look. “…Stiles.”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Don’t get into any more trouble.”

 

He slipped out, disappearing just in time for the nurse to come in and see Stiles awake.

 

“Easier said than done,” Stiles muttered, shaking his head at the nurse’s curious look and smiling up at her easily. “Are you busting me out?”

 

The nurse laughed, patting his hand and reaching for the call button hear his head. “Only after the doctor sees to you and we call your father. You can relax, Stiles – just relax.”

 

Yeah, _way_ easier said than done.

 

~+~

 

In school the next day, Stiles kept to himself.

 

He ignored everyone’s stares and whispers, sticking close to Scott and Isaac in the hallways and sitting next to Scott or Lydia or even Jackson whenever he was in class. Scott tended to talk simply about lacrosse, or how his summer went while he was out of state; talking about his dad’s Canadian girlfriend and about how he didn’t _really_ like Montana but it was okay in that there was nothing supernatural about the place.

 

Lydia distracted Stiles with talk of AP English and Calculus, taking his homework from him and looking it over as soon as he dragged it out of the bottomless pit that was his book bag. She would point out his mistakes in his Calculus homework, rolling her eyes and sighing in what seemed to be exasperation at his ‘apparent stupidity – really, Stiles, how could you have messed up on _that_ question, it was the easiest of the lot!’ Stiles appreciated both the look-over and the distraction.

 

Jackson reacted the most surprisingly, however, when a sophomore who had been trying out for lacrosse the day Jefferson suddenly died – heart failure; a rare type of heart condition that wasn’t obvious, really, until the person died. It hit teenagers around the ages 15 to 18 and was fatal – on the field approached Stiles to ask him what it was like. After all, that was the question on everyone’s minds, wasn’t it? What was it like, to have a boy die in your arms? What was it like? What was it _like_?

 

Before Stiles could even try to deflect the kid’s curiousity, though, Jackson appeared out-of-fucking-nowhere and slammed the sophomore against the lockers, eyes narrowed and glowing that ethereal blue that haunted Stiles’ nightmares on bad nights when he remembered geriatric psychopaths and running Old Faithful into a lizard that should have been dead.

 

“How about you stop asking stupid questions and move on, kid,” he had growled, his voice falling into an almost animalistic tone, and Stiles briefly panicked about Jackson losing his control in front of everyone. They’d have Derek on their hands, then, and the Alpha was busy enough, okay? They didn’t need to add out-of-control douche-pups to the mix. Thankfully, wherever Jackson was, Lydia followed, and the strawberry blonde goddess of all things beautiful and mathematical wrapped her arms around Jackson’s free one, leaning against him and whispering that he should let go of the kid, now, don’t you think?

 

The lacrosse co-captain let go of the sophomore with a frown and a flex of his fingers, eyes dimming back to their usual human blue, and the kid scampered away from Stiles and Jackson both, not even bothering looking back. All around them people were whispering, and Stiles could feel a flush crawling up the back of his neck, before he turned to Jackson and opened his mouth to say something – a thank you, a ‘what the hell was that’, some witty quip about dogs if he could figure one out on such short notice – but Jackson turned from Stiles, giving him a cool wave and disappearing down the hallway with Lydia practically floating alongside him.

 

After classes, Stiles headed to lacrosse practice with Scott and Isaac, looking up when Coach Finstock appeared in front of them and grabbed Stiles’ shoulder without warning. The teen winced, half-expecting his coach to convulse or choke or otherwise die in front of him, but thankfully nothing happened, and he followed after the slightly off-kilter adult to his office.

 

“How’re you feeling, Stilinski?”

 

Oh, well, that was actually super unexpected.

 

“I’m alright, Coach – feeling fit as a fiddle and all that! Though, you know, I’ve never understood that saying, because how is a fiddle ‘fit’, exactly? It’s carved wood and cat guts and none of that really speaks to me about ‘health’. Maybe I should Google it, I’m sure there’s all sorts of stuff about it, and it’d be a good way to pass the weekend –”

 

“I only ask that you don’t talk about it in your in-class exam essay, Stilinski,” Coach Finstock said dryly, before shaking his head and leaning against his desk heavily. “I was gonna maybe put you on first string this year – you did so well at the final game, and McCall and Lahey tell me they’ve been helping you train over the summer – but maybe I should bench you for the first few games.”

 

“No!” Stiles jumped up to his feet, having been sitting in the seat across from the Coach’s desk, flailing his arms and shaking his head emphatically – so much so that for a moment he was dizzy. Once his head stopped spinning, he looked back to Finstock with wide eyes and planted his hands firmly on his desk, as if hoping if he kind of loomed, the lacrosse coach would change his mind.

 

“Coach, I think that would be the worst idea ever – if I don’t exercise my newly gained lacrosse skills, they’ll rot away and I’ll become as useless as I was last year before the final game, and that would be terrible, Coach, that would be a loss of pure talent, and do you really want to lose such a valuable asset to the team? We can’t always depend on Jackson and Isaac and Scott – sometimes they aren’t going to be here or their heads won’t always be in the game, as we saw last time. You gotta have reliable back-up, is all I’m saying.”

 

Coach Finstock stared at him for a long time, his expression dubious – or at least as dubious as his slightly muppet-like face could get – before he sighed and nodded, already looking like he was regretting every life choice he had ever made thus far.

 

“Alright, Stilinski, but you can’t let me down! If you aren’t playing up to par for whatever reason, I’m benching you and that’s it. Got it?”

 

“Sir, yes, sir!” Stiles gave a sloppy salute, holding back his grin as best as he could, escaping from the coach’s office before he was properly dismissed out of it and running over to Scott and Isaac with the widest grin on his face.

 

“Guess who’s on first line!”

 

Celebrating with his friends his new jock status, high-fiving and hugging and generally babbling excitedly, Stiles briefly forgot that he was supposed to be getting over the death of a classmate in front of him.

 

~+~

 

Stiles fell into a routine after that.

 

He would get up early in the mornings to make his dad breakfast, talking to him about his plans for the day and telling his dad that he couldn’t eat burgers and French fries for dinner, no matter how much he might have wanted to – they were no good for him, and he had to watch out for his cholesterol, remember? The Sheriff couldn’t do anything to impede his health, he still had a lot of criminals to catch; and who would be around to watch over the delinquent Stilinski, huh? So stick to a salad and a healthy club sandwich, okay?

 

After that, he would get ready for school, checking his e-mail once before leaving and then periodically texting Scott at every red light to remind him of anything he might forget while getting ready for school; Stiles always got to school earlier than Scott, because he liked to utilize the library for a few last minute homework checks, and he didn’t want to have his friends talking around him in the library and distracting him like nothing else.

 

He would then go through the school day, letting Scott copy off of his Chemistry homework when the teen wolf would suddenly recall that he hadn’t done his homework the night before, too busy trying to think up ways to be ‘just friends’ with Allison, or too busy with work and learning wolfy-things with Deaton, or whatever it was that distracted Scott McCall this time around. If it was a bad day, he’d get in trouble with Harris and he’d get detention for three hours after school, which had to be criminal. On good days, he’d only get an hour, tops.

 

Practice days he got to actually participate, holding his own against a bunch of boys bigger than him physically and three werewolves – so, really, he did pretty damn well all things considering.

 

He hadn’t heard from Derek since that evening in the hospital, and Jackson kept to himself during practices and classes, though he gave Stiles considering looks every once in a while which was not at all reassuring, but overall life had settled around him pretty normally.

 

So of course, that’s when everything had to go to shit.

 

Of course, by ‘shit’, Stiles meant that the looming Alpha Pack of Doom that had been lurking for God-knows-how-long finally decided that looming was no longer a thing and it was time to get down to business.

 

And of course, it happened during the first serious lacrosse game of the season, because that was how their life went.

 

The lights had just been cut, feeling a little too much like the first and last lacrosse game Stiles had played before Argent decided to kidnap him, and people were naturally panicking in the bleachers and on the field. Unlike last time, however, Stiles was led off the field by three beta werewolves, as if all three were expecting another old man with a vendetta to come up behind the token-human and snatch him away to the nearest creepy basement.

 

Stiles liked to think he’d be able to take care of himself this time, but the sentiment from his furry classmates was much appreciated all the same.

 

Of course, just as they were making their way towards the locker rooms, because what doesn’t scream ‘safety and security’ like the Beacon Hill’s high school boys’ locker room, they were intercepted by Aiden the slightly-less-intelligent twin. Stiles was very tempted to start calling him Thing 2 and his brother Thing 1, if only to make them appear less menacing.

 

“Keep quiet and come with me.”

 

“Or what, you’ll rip our throats out with your teeth?” Stiles said flippantly, because if he could bring up some of his favourite Derek Hale quotes in casual conversation, then he would. Derek sometimes said the most hilarious things when he was being threatening. Even if at the time of saying said hilarious things he was actually kind of really freaking scary.

 

“I’m tempted,” Aiden said with a snide little smile before he grabbed onto Scott’s shoulder and shoved the crooked-jaw wolf in front of him. “Now _move_ ; we don’t want to attract outsiders.”

 

Outsiders being their parents, because of course this was their _fucking life_. Stiles was beginning to regret keeping his father in the dark about everything for so long, and determined that if he made it out of this alive, he was going to sit John Stilinski down with a finger of whiskey and tell all. He’d probably bring Scott as the ‘show’ half of his ‘show-and-tell’.

 

He really hoped they were alive to have that conversation.

 

Following the twin in a tense quiet that made Stiles fidget, the three betas and their human left the lacrosse field and the chaos behind them, heading towards the student parking lot where they met up with Ethan. The twins conversed for a moment, Ethan making small hand gestures and Aiden shoving his hands as deep into his pockets as he could manage, before he snorted out what seemed to be an agreement, sounding more wolf than human, and with one last withering glare at the four of them he bounded off into the dark and disappeared.

 

Stiles turned back just in time to see Ethan’s eyes glow red as he gave them all an impish smile.

 

“Anya _really_ wants to meet you, Little Red.”

 

Silence.

 

“…Really? You couldn’t have thought of anything cleverer?”

 

~+~

 

“Ethan, why does the human have a gag on?”

 

“He has this nasty habit of talking forever unless you make him shut up,” Ethan said with a shrug, walking over to the statuesque, dark hair-and-skinned beauty sitting in the dilapidated-but-improving! Hale House parlour. Stiles gave the two of them a very impressive glare, if he did say so himself, before he was moved to sit on a chair across from the woman invading Derek’s territory. Scott, Isaac and Jackson were moved into a different room, probably going down to those creepy cells that Scott told him about when he busted Derek out that one time Kate went psycho, leaving the teen alone with the she-wolf.

 

After a moment, the woman – Anya, presumably – glanced over at Ethan and nodded, and the smarter twin walked back over to Stiles, untying his gag and letting it drop from his mouth. He took the piece of cloth he’d used and pocketed it, walking out of the room shortly after freeing Stiles’ most prominent weapon and leaving the wolf and the boy well and truly alone.

 

“I’ve been hearing interesting things about you, Stiles,” Anya said after a moment, examining her nails as if they were the most fascinating thing on the planet since the invention of touch screens. She glanced up at him after a moment of contemplating her manicure or whatever, her eyes a heavy kind of brown that sat on Stiles’ shoulders and _weighed_ him down. “Such interesting things.”

 

“Like what, exactly? ‘Cause I’m an interesting guy, to be quite honest. Was it my awesome grades? The budding friendship between me and a goddess of math personified? Maybe the fact that I know a bunch of werewolves and I play on the lacrosse team with most of ‘em?”

 

Anya smiled thinly, humouring him, before looking over her shoulder. Someone stepped out of the shadows, then, and Stiles’ eyes widened.

 

Boyd stood in front of him, hulking and hunched over and looking so much like the lonely kid who ate lunch alone and drove the zamboni at the local ice rink. It was like he had never even been a wolf at all; he was still quiet, invisible Vernon Boyd, who Stiles only ever remembered when he needed a favour or a bribe (or both).

 

“Boyd here tells me that you’ve always _smelt_ funny, Stiles,” Anya said with a smile, reclining back in her seat. “He’s the only one who’s ever noticed, too, because he’s the only one who’s developed at all in his new abilities. Describe again what the human child smells like, Boyd, dear? I can’t quite remember your lovely phrasing.”

 

“…He smells like medication,” Boyd started softly; speaking in that smooth rumble of his that was so distinct despite his invisibility. “And he smells like gunpowder. He smells like home-cooked meals and power drinks and curly fries and –”

 

“Boyd, get to the _good_ _part_.”

 

Boyd flinched, and Stiles really had to wonder how a slight change in intonation could make immovable Boyd react like that. Not even Derek yelling had moved him, and yet…

 

“Stiles smells like poppies.”

 

…Wait, what?

 

Stiles looked at Boyd in confusion while Anya smiled and stood up from her chair, patting Boyd on the shoulder before walking passed him. The shorter teenager kept his eye on the quiet wolf while Anya approached him, leaning down and breathing in deeply at his neck, because that wasn’t creepy or anything.

 

“Personal boundaries, lady, as a human I have them.”

 

“Oh, shush,” Anya murmured, closing her eyes and breathing in again. “I’m sorting through all the cloaking scents. Why do you have so many cloaking scents, Stiles? People only cloak their scents when they don’t want others to find out what they really are.” The tip of her nose dragged along his hairline, the fine strands of his growing hair shivering with her breath and making him feel like velvet rubbed the wrong way. “Are you not as human as you say you are? Ohh, _do_ you turn into something fun?”

 

“Nope,” Stiles tried to say as flippantly as possible, but his voice cracked when he imagined sharp alpha teeth so close to his skin. The last time an alpha had been that close to the pale, fragile flesh of his person, Peter had been offering him the bite and Stiles had been half-lying his way out of it. “What do you mean, ‘cloaking scents’?”

 

“Scents that hide what you really smell like – that you smell like poppies. Scents like medicine and gun powder, home-cooked meals and power drinks and curly fries,” Anya said tapping her finger against Stiles’ neck with every scent she listed. “All of these and a handful more, all to hide the fact that you smell like poppies. Are poppies significant? Tell me, researcher, what does the poppy mean?”

 

Stiles swallowed thickly, keeping his eyes on Boyd while the other teenager stared back at him as if he wanted to apologize for something. He couldn’t imagine what; so he smelled like flowers? Whatever, he could have smelled like something worse. He could’ve smelled like rotten cheese or something – that would’ve been terrible.

 

“…Well,” he said after a moment, realizing that Anya actually wanted an answer. Go figure. “I know that in Canada and over in England, the poppy’s used for Remembrance Day – there’s a poem written by a soldier all about poppies, I think, I can’t really remember the name – oh! And there’s that Greek god of sleep, Morpheus or whatever, and he used to live in a cave of poppy seeds, ‘cause poppy seeds can make opium, and a drug that, if mixed right, can make you go to sleep, so morphine, which sounds a lot like ‘Morpheus’ if you think about it –”

 

“Tch,” Anya scoffed, moving away from Stiles and walking towards the archway that would lead to the front foyer, “that doesn’t tell me anything. Boyd, take him to where we put the girls, will you? I’ve got some betas to question on a certain incompetent Alpha.”

 

Boyd pressed his lips together, mouth skewing as if he were contemplating not following her orders, when Anya look back at him and her dark brown eyes flashed crimson red.

 

“That was not a _suggestion_ , Boyd.”

 

Boyd sighed, looking back at Stiles and shrugging his big shoulders before walking over to him and grabbing his arm, dragging him up to his feet.

 

Stiles smiled up at him weakly, nudging Boyd’s side with his shoulder, and Boyd gave a tiny smile in return, reaching up to ruffle Stiles’ hair because apparently they were at that point.

 

And then Boyd stiffened, eyes widening and turning bright gold, before black blood and bile dripped down out of his mouth.

 

Stiles watched with wide eyes as Boyd collapsed onto his knees, falling onto his side with a rather noticeable _thud_ onto the dusty, ashy floorboards, his body twitching and his claws growing out in a loss of self control. Stiles was suddenly pushed back when Anya appeared in front of Boyd; he fell against the chair he had been sitting on, wincing when it snapped underneath him and hoping that he didn’t accidentally impale himself on broken chair bits.

 

He was pulled out of his worries for his own safety when he suddenly had the flashing red eyes of Anya shoved into his face; she didn’t look all that lovely now, half wolfed out and pissed beyond belief. He did not need super werewolf senses to know that she was very close to ripping out a new hole into his body – preferably somewhere painful and unpleasant and quite possibly lethal, if he was unlucky.

 

“What did you _do_ to him?”

 

“Nothing!” Stiles scrambled back, trying to put some distance between the two of them and forgetting about all those times he was told to _not run away from the predator when they were angry_. Fight or flight instincts were kicking in, okay, and Stiles was not a fighter, no matter how many times he suggested they kill whoever happened to be the problem of the week.

 

“How are you not lying when it’s obvious you must have done something?”

 

“What happened to him?”

 

Anya sneered, before pulling back, revealing Boyd lying on the ground stone still, eyes staring up at the ceiling and blood and bile dripping down the corner of his mouth sickly. Stiles could only notice the _lack_ of a rising and falling chest, suggesting breathing, and he wondered for a moment what his dad would say to this one-two-three pattern developing around his son.

 

“…Is he dead?”

 

“ _Yes_ ,” Anya growled, glaring at him as if she couldn’t believe he was wasting time stating the obvious. “And somehow you’re involved. So what. Did. You. _Do_?”

 

But Stiles couldn’t answer, because he knew he had to have done something – he just didn’t know _what_. And Derek and Peter were trying to figure out what was going on with him, which really wasn’t all that reassuring but it was all he had and it would have to make do. Yet he hadn’t seen Derek since that night in the hospital, so he had to guess that they hadn’t found anything (which, really, he kind of expected), and so he thought maybe he just had the worst luck. Because once was an incident and twice was coincidence.

 

But three was a pattern.

 

Three was a goddamn _pattern_.

 

Yet even if Stiles had eventually thought of at least something witty to say to Anya the Alpha, he never got the opportunity to, because the front door to Hale House burst open and the Hales came crashing in with snarls and righteous indignity.

 

(Stiles would be pretty indignant, too, if dangerous enemies had kidnapped pretty much his whole pack and then kept them locked up in the ruins of his family home. That he was in the middle of reconstructing. Low blow, Alpha Pack, seriously.)

 

Stiles didn’t pay attention to the battle that broke out around him, though.

 

He was too busy staring at Boyd’s lifeless eyes and wondering _why_.

 

~+~

 

Derek took him home after everything, told him to get some rest, and then left him. Which was typical, really, Stiles didn’t expect much different from his resident Sourwolf.

 

Yet instead of ignoring the orders and staying up on the computer all night playing MMORPGs and looking up random interesting facts or random interesting porn, Stiles crawled into his bed after stripping out of his uniform, collapsed against his pillow, and slept for the entire night.

 

The next day he got the sternest talking to from his father in the world, and he thought that he would have to hold off on the conversation about werewolves and hunters and how Beacon Hills wasn’t so quiet anymore these days until Scott was feeling better and wasn’t getting his hide tanned by his mother. Melissa McCall could be a terror if she wanted to – Scott had to have got it from somewhere, and it was definitely not from his no-account father.

 

Stiles kept to his house over the weekend, ignoring calls from Scott and Isaac until they either gave up or, in Isaac’s case, appeared in his bedroom window to really make sure he was okay.

 

He had a harder time chasing off Lydia and Jackson, for some reason, but the two of them were acting weird anyway, so he didn’t even pay any attention to that.

 

On Sunday evening, after having taken a long shower where he thought about his strange pattern and relieved some tension through warm water and a good imagination, Stiles stumbled back into his room and pulled on a pair of sweatpants, falling into his computer chair and booting up his computer after a moment ruffling his hair as dry as he was going to get it. He tugged on the longer strands, looking up and cross-eyed at his noticeable fringe and wondering whether he should shave his head shaved again this year when he heard his window unlatch and open.

 

It probably said something when Stiles didn’t even twitch at the noise of intrusion. His life was too weird for him to worry about normal people breaking and entering these days.

 

“Growing your hair out?”

 

“Maybe.” Stiles spun around and faced Derek, leaning back and crossing his arms over his bare chest. Well, this was quite the role reversal. He wondered if Derek felt this uncomfortable being shirtless in the same room as him. Probably not. Derek was sculpted by the Gods of Good Looks or something. “What’re you doing here? Haven’t seen you since you saved the day last week.”

 

“I’m checking in on you,” Derek said, and Stiles almost believed it. After a moment of silence, the Alpha sighed and looked out the window. “The Alpha Pack is still out there – I’m making sure they’re not coming back here to kidnap you again.”

 

“I’m getting really sick of getting kidnapped all the time. I would appreciate it very much if someone else got to be kidnapee every once in a while. How about Isaac? He’s got a sweet face; he could totally pull it off.”

 

“Isaac’s got claws; he’d be a terrible kidnap victim.”

 

“Damn, guess I gotta work on my manicure.” Stiles snapped, settling farther back in his seat. “Why else are you here? It can’t just be the Alphas, you could just creep around outside for that.” Derek went silent and Stiles leaned forward, looking at him intently. “Derek…?”

 

“Peter has a theory.”

 

“I like theories – even from dead guys.”

 

Derek snorted, shaking his head and moving to sit on Stiles’ bed. Stiles swung his chair accordingly, folding his arms over his knees and watching him with all the patience he could muster.

 

After another few moments of silence, Derek broke it – for once.

 

“What’s your actual name, Stiles?”

 

Stiles sat back, eyebrows rising high to his hairline and expression a mixture of confused and ‘are you seriously asking me that right _now_?’

 

“Are you _seriously_ asking me that right now?”

 

“Yeah,” Derek nodded, staring down at his hands and folding them together, slotting his fingers between the gaps and slowly pulling them apart – over and over again, creating a pattern to distract himself with. “It’s actually important; I’m testing out Peter’s theory.”

 

“Can I know the theory?”

 

“Not yet.”

 

Stiles sighed, shaking his head and turning towards his computer, logging in. “I don’t tell anyone my name – I’m happy that Scott’s seemed to have _forgotten_ it, truth be told. I think the only people who remember my name isn’t actually ‘Stiles Stilinski’ are my father, Lydia, and my kindergartener teacher – but she was the only one who could pronounce it, so.”

 

“Stiles…”

 

“It’s a stupid name, okay? It’s not even important.”

 

“Name’s are very important,” Derek countered sharply, eyes boring into Stiles’ as if he was hoping he could drill this point into the teenager’s head with the power of his will alone. “Names are your identity, Stiles – they are who you _are_.”

 

“What’s it mean to be a Derek?”

 

“That’s not the name my mother called me.” Derek shook his head, running his hand over his face, the rough skin of his palm scraping against his beard stubble before he looked up at Stiles again. “Stiles, what did your mother call you?”

 

Stiles stared at Derek for a moment, really taking him in. He thought about what he had just said, how Derek was ‘not the name his mother called him’, and it made him wonder what she _did_ call him. He then couldn’t help but notice his wording.

 

_What did your mother call you?_

 

Not his parents.

 

Not his father.

 

His mother.

 

“Promise not to tell anyone?”

 

Derek gave him a long look, and he couldn’t tell whether it was calculating or contemplative, but it seared into his skin and made him feel examined and x-rayed, like Derek knew all of his secrets with that one look of hazel eyes drowned in blue.

 

“I promise.”

 

He believed him.

 

“My mother called me Gilt,” he said after a moment, looking away from Derek and remembering the way his mother’s tongue used to roll over his name, her accent from ‘the Old Country’ colouring her words. She had sounded like she was from another world, and he had loved to listen to her tell fairy tales because she had the best voice for it.

 

“Guilt?”

 

“Not _guilt_ ,” he rolled his eyes, rubbing the corner of one and rolling his shoulders. “ _Gilt_. It’s short for a word in Lithuanian.”

 

“What word?”

 

“I could never get my mouth around it.”

 

“ _Stiles_.”

 

“God, it’s something like _giltiné_ , okay? The way mom used to say it, it was like there was magic around the word. But when I say it, it just falls flat and it sounds like a bunch of useless gibberish. What’s that matter? My name’s not _giltiné_ , it’s _Gilt_. Which is no better, I suppose. It sounds ridiculous. And no one can pronounce it quite right because no one understands it’s not English. Really, it was frustrating throughout my younger school years, trying to teach my teachers and peers how to say my name.” He paused, scratching at the back of his head.

 

“Anyway, it doesn’t even matter – after Mom died I started to go by Stiles. No one’s called me that name in years. Not even my dad. It doesn’t feel right.”

 

“Do you know what it means?”

 

“What?”

 

“ _Giltiné_. Do you know what it means?”

 

Stiles frowned, thinking back on when his mother used to whisper the word into his ear and cuddle him close. He thought about her hand on his cheek, how warm it had felt before it dropped. How he had felt something pass through them, like a thread being gently pulled out of a seam allowing two halves of the same cloth to naturally fall apart. He thought about her eyes fading, her voice whispering ‘thank you, baby’ in that voice that told him fairy tales.

 

“No. I don’t.”

 

He heard Derek shift, then, standing up from the bed and walking over to him. Callused fingertips trailed over his arm, and he remembered that he wasn’t wearing his usual three layers of shirts, and so he shivered at the touch, closing his eyes and wondering for a moment why it felt like it was completely okay for Derek, an adult-in-his-twenties, to touch him like this despite his jailbait status.

 

He felt like something warm and heavy settled over his shoulders as Derek wrapped his fingers around his wrist.

 

“It means ‘Death’.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Kalipsé: Short of Apokalipsé, it’s Lithuanian for ‘Revelations’.  
> Hellmouth: A literal mouth into hell. Medieval artists depicted it as a mouth surrounded by flame with demons crawling in and out of it.  
> August 12: It’s actually the ‘12’ that’s important, since I just took 1.2 from Genesis: “the earth was a formless void and the darkness covered the face of the deep, while the wind from God swept over the face of the waters”. Talking about how the world started off in darkness.  
> Plymouth Neon: My friend used to have a car like this, and she apparently, and I quote, ‘almost died so many times’ in that car.  
> John: Pretty common name, but it also has connections with the Bible – John the Baptist comes to mind.  
> “I’m on a diet”: Important.  
> Beloved: A book by Toni Morrison about a runaway slave who killed her baby so that it would never live a life of slavery. The whole book is about the build-up, and the consequences, of the murder.  
> Three days: Holy trinity; Jesus rose on the third day; the three sons of Noah; it took Abraham and Isaac three days to climb to the mountain where Abraham would sacrifice his son; the three attempts of Delilah to learn Samson’s secret; I think you get it. In the story, the three days signifies the return of normality with the return of Scott.  
> Mentions of Stiles’ growing hair, Jackson’s buzzed hair, etc: I’m just bringing in a little reality from the actors’ appearance choices on their hiatus.  
> Pretty Boy Floyd: Mostly just because, and to show some of the random things Stiles knows about, such as gangsters from the ‘30s.  
> “Holy shit, Jackson, are you sick?”: Important.  
> Ethan and Aiden: The Alpha Twins, who had their names released recently.  
> “What are you implying, Amy?”: Stiles says a quote from Little Women, but he’s quoting the Winona Ryder film, not the book, where Amy says this line – unlike in the book, where Mrs March says it.  
> “like Nine without his jacket”: A Doctor Who reference – if only to show Stiles’ various tastes in media entertainment.  
> Lydia’s and Jackson’s behaviour: Will be explained.  
> Three beta wolves: I love me some threes.  
> Poppies: According to http://www.hmk.on.ca/plantmeanings.html, the poppy is a symbol of death. It is, however, also all the things Stiles mentioned.  
> Cloaking scents: Will be explained later.  
> The three victims: Seriously, three is a magical number. Each of their deaths is legitimized, too. Plymouth Neon: Banged his head hard enough that, when Stiles touched him, it revealed itself to be lethal. Jefferson: A pre-existing heart condition; I had a schoolmate die of a heart condition just like this. Boyd: Boyd was beaten by the Alpha Pack into submission; Stiles’ touch reversed the healing.  
> Anya: A name I made up for one of the Alphas.  
> Sunday evening: the day of rest.  
> Names: Names are super important – and the main characters that are focused on in this series each have a name that is not the one we know them by, as shown by Derek’s “that’s not the name my mother called me”.  
> Gilt: Short for giltiné, it is Lithuanian for: death; reaper; a symbol of death. It has the added bonus of kind of sounding like ‘guilt’, which Stiles is full of.


End file.
